So this weekend is DBs weekend with his daughter. I am getting use to him being away for 5 days in a row every two weeks and then coming”home” to me. Him being away has its advantages, I can get more work done, I can focus on the kids, and I can even write this blog.

In an effort to stay in touch, he sent me an innocent little note, “What’s going on @Harrogate?” Harrogate is the street we live on. These 5 words, “What’s going on @Harrogate?, sent me into a tizzy of a sleepless night. Why didn’t he say, “What’s going on @home?” One word and I didn’t sleep till 2:00 am.

Maybe it isn’t home to him. Maybe he just didn’t think. Maybe it was a Freudian slip, maybe it wasn’t. I mean what the heck is home to him at this point? He has the good fortune or bad fortune to have three places with his name listed as owner/lessee at this point. When can too many homes be a curse. In my opinion, now. He has his house with his hopefully soon ex-wife. Fortunately, to the best of my knowledge, he does not spend any time there. He has his apartment with his daughter. This is the place I resent, but I try to be resentful in silence. Getting the apartment was the idea of DB’s counselor. The person he sees to help him go through the emotions of the divorce and the changes associated with it. Due to the recency of DB leaving his wife he thought it would be inappropriate for his daughter to be introduced to me and my three children immediately. So the apartment was intended to give Bitty (his daughter) a place to acclimate on her way to a new blended family, and our home. Never mind, my kids were forced to acclimate to DB when he showed up at my door asking to come back, but that is another story.

Notice to me all the other locations are apartments and houses, but Harrogate is home. It is the place I sleep every night. It is the place my children sleep when they are with me and not with their dad. It is the place I decorate with corn stalks, gourds, and ghosts for Halloween and where my kids invite their friends to “hang out.” It is where I am when I greet DB at the door with a kiss, a drink, and a hug that tells him I never want to let go. It is our home. At least for me it is. I hope he feels the same way too.

I just went to pick up the mail and the letters are a mix of sizes and weights. As is typical the bills and promotions are addresses to me (nothing new, nothing exciting). Then I get to the bottom of the pile and there is the bigger stuff, The College Alumni Bulletin, and The Journal of Medicine, AND a package from the Benefits Consultants. I hang over the island in the kitchen and breeze through the Alumni magazine. Nothing of that much interest but a smile comes across my face and I am happy. Why you ask? Because DB’s mail comes to our home now. It means he has to come back because he has to get his mail. When I was little (even now) I don’t like to go away for more than a week. What if something important comes in the mail and I miss it. Nothing important comes anymore, nothing that you can’t get online or via your cell phone, but to me I know DB has to come home because I have his mail. To me it means he live here.

People talk about divorce and the affects on children. It is not the act of divorce. It is the action of the parents before, during and after divorce. Look I am not a shrink and I am sure that some people (experts) believe that divorce scars. And I am sure it does. But there is some control over how much it scars. Two people who can control their emotions, regardless of how much hate or hurt is involved, will have children that are better adjusted and less scared than two people moving into different homes who still fight constantly. Unfortunately, I fall into the second group. Very unfortunately. My ex has sent me up to 25 emails a day saying I am a horrible person and a horrible mother. He has threatened me. He has pushed his way into my home. He has called what was our family home repeatedly after 11:00 p.m. demanding to talk to my daughter. That shit scars.

My ex is an attorney and for a brief time in his career he dabbled in divorce. I remember one of his clients called our home shortly before Christmas one year. The client was furious and I could hear him yelling through the phone, asking my ex, “Why can’t we just freeze the bitches assets.” I heard my ex respond, “Look my job is to get you through this as quickly and painlessly as possible so you can both put it behind you and get on with your lives.” I have asked myself a million times why those words don’t apply to him.

Want rational words from a rational mind. You get divorced, give yourself time to morn. Morn with dignity and self reflection. Don’t morn in front of your children, not to excees. Don’t make them feel that you are their responsibility. And before you think you are done morning, when you could morn a little more, get on with your life. Someone once said, the process of divorce is over-rated and the result is under-rated. It is true. Everything you heard about the process…most times it is worse. Your children don’t need to know how much worse. And remember, when you are free and the charade of a marriage is over, you have something you did not have before….Hope. God bless hope. God bless knowing there is a chance tomorrow could be better. Better for you, better for your kids, just better. Introduce your children to hope, not hate.

My father use to say that when a man writes a book he is writing the learnings of his life. Thereby when reading a book you are learning the lessons of a lifetime. Although I am a business executive and my now significant other is a surgeon, for me the biggest lesson I am learning is through this relationship. The pros, the cons, the effect on my children, his children our ex’s. Isn’t there a way that what I have experienced can help another? Each person is different. I now. But there are no perfect endings and their are few tragic endings as well. I believe most are somewhere in the middle. I wish I could help someone else navigate the murky waters of an action which solicits such strong opinions from people and affects so many people lives. Can I help?

I got what I wanted. Isn’t funny how when we get what we want we are happy for a day, a week, maybe a month if we are really lucky. At least I am. I never have the ability to be in a perpetual state of bliss. People always tell me it is the journey, not the destination and now I know they are right. I love DB. I miss him when he is not here and I wish I could spend more time with him. But life is complicated. He has his children and I have mine and our families have not blended yet. We live together but when he has his kids he “nests” in a different home and when his time with the kids are over he comes home to me. That makes me lonely. There are some very good aspects to this arrangement. My children do not have to struggle for my attention because we have dedicated time together. This is not as important to my teenagers who are engaged in after school activities, homework, etc. Although I know they are happy that I am in the next room if they need me or want to chat. It is more important for my little one who is with me as much as possible when we are together. So I know this very wierd, what I think of as highly unusual arrangement has its advantages but it is difficult to remember what they are when you are going on day 4 without seeing your significant other. I miss him. Can you tell?

How is that for a revealing first blog. Yes it is over. The affair ended. Don’t all affairs end. Here is the catch, my affair was different. Not because we were in love or anything like that. But our affair was very different. Statistically different.

We each left our spouse to be together. This is statistically different than most extramarital affairs. My “partner” and I are not proud of how we got here. We would both say we got here because we were chicken. Too chicken to leave our spouses. We would say we had an affair to keep our family in tact. We knew we would not survive in our respective marriages, and we did not want to end our marriages because of the children, so we tried to find emotional support somewhere else to help make the marriage sustainable. But it didn’t work.

Are we happier now. We would both say yes. Is there pain. Unequivocal, horrible pain. Are our spouses happier? His appears to be, mine appears not to be. This has a lot to do with the initial psychological health of our partners.

Why the blog? Because I want people to learn from my mistakes and my courage. I also want people to know statistics are not always correct. Even morality is not black and white. I want to tell my story because I have a need to. I need people to understand that like anything, getting what you want does not come without pain and struggle. And getting what you want also comes with immense joy.

I guess I am writing to promote conversation. I am writing to see if when the story is told, the full story, will people look at themselves differently. Will people see that it is not the act, but how people react to an act that has the ability to strengthen or destroy.